Gene Herrick, a retired Associated Press photographer who covered the Korean War and was credited with photographing Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and the killings of Americans in the early days of the civil rights movement, died Friday. Famous for iconic photos such as The Trial of Mitt Till’s Killer. . He is 97 years old.

In 1956, Herrick photographed Rosa Parks being fingerprinted after she refused to sit in the back of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. That same year, Herrick took a photo of King smiling and being kissed by Coretta Scott King on the steps of the courthouse, after King was convicted of conspiring to boycott the city’s buses.

In a 2020 interview with The Associated Press, Herrick said it was difficult to get photos of King smiling.

“I knew he was going to be let out of jail that morning,” Herrick said. “All these people were waiting for him on the steps, including his wife, who reached out and gave him a big kiss.”

Herrick died in a nursing home in Ridge Creek, Virginia, surrounded by people who loved him, said his longtime partner, Kitty Hylton.

“He was very proud to be a journalist. That was his life,” Hilton said. “He loved AP. He loved the people of AP. He was so grateful for all the adventures he had.”

Herrick also covered the trial of two white men who killed Till, a 14-year-old black teenager who was kidnapped, tortured and lynched in Mississippi after he was accused of flirting with a white woman. . An all-white jury found the pair not guilty in 1955, and a year later they pleaded guilty to murder in an interview with Look magazine.

Herrick was particularly proud of his coverage of the Korean War. “Good reporters want to be there, wherever it happens,” he said in a 2018 Associated Press article.

In a 2015 interview with The Associated Press Enterprise Archives, Herrick acknowledged the dangers of war photography, but added, “The same goes for civilian photography. I was nearly killed multiple times during the Clinton riots, with guns stuck in My Chest.”, Tennessee, and places like that. “

He has also covered sports including Major League Baseball, Elvis Presley and five U.S. presidents.

“God and the AP gave me an opportunity I never had,” Herrick said in a 2018 AP story. “I mean, I’m the luckiest kid in the world to be able to do what I do.”

AP Executive Editor Julie Pace said Sunday that Herrick “captured history for the AP. We and many people around the world benefited from his keen eye and the power of visual storytelling.”

Herrick joined The Associated Press as an office assistant at age 16 in Columbus, Ohio. Two years later, he moved to Cleveland, where he lived with and often assisted an AP photographer. Herrick got his big break when his roommate was unavailable to cover a Cleveland Indians game and he was asked to take his place.

“They must be stupid,” Herrick said he thought. “I cover ball games for the AP?”

Herrick was similarly shocked soon after when he was promoted to AP photographer in Memphis. When he volunteered for Korea in 1950, he didn’t have much experience yet and found himself on the front lines, standing in the middle of the road, completely exposed.

“It was a beautiful war. I mean, planes were coming in, dropping napalm and machine guns, and right on the mountainside, I got a picture here of the wounded being put on stretchers and flying up from the sky. . The road was right in front of me, and oh, I thought, man, this is great,” Herrick recalled in 2015, laughing. “I was hammering away at the old four-by-five speed graphics, the film packs of the day. I looked around and a soldier in the trench said, ‘Sir?’ I said yes?’ He said, ‘You see that coming out of there? Is it dirt…do you know what that is? “

I said, ‘No. what is it? ‘ He said, “Those are bullets!” … So I went off the road and fell into the ditch with him. But I got some really nice photos. “

He retired from the Associated Press in 1970 and began a second career serving the developmentally disabled in Columbus and Rocky Mount, Virginia.

At age 91, Herrick was inducted into the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame at Virginia Commonwealth University, which he considers one of the highlights of his life.

Herrick, who was born in Columbus from one previous marriage, is survived by two sons, Chris and Mark Herrick of the Indianapolis area, daughter Lola Reese of Peterstown, W.Va., and five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.